A Lawrenceville man accused of multiple counts of armed robbery, aggravated assault and false imprisonment was found guilty this week and sentenced to 230 years in prison by the Forsyth County Superior Criminal Court.
On Wednesday, a Forsyth County jury returned guilty verdicts on 16 counts against Kaleem Ariff Tariq-Madyun, a 35-year-old man who was accused of robbing a north Forsyth McDonald’s at gunpoint and trapping store employees in a cooler during the robbery in October 2018.
According to Assistant District Attorney Heather N. Dunn, at trial on Wednesday, a jury found Tariq-Madyun guilty of all counts, excluding the charges for possession of a firearm as a convicted felon, which were dismissed.
Dunn said that Tariq-Madyun was sentenced under Georgia’s recidivist statute OCGA 17-10-7(a), which deals with individuals that are convicted multiple times with felonies and serious violent felonies.
Court records show that Tariq-Madyun was previously charged with six counts of first degree armed robbery after six restaurants in Decatur, Alabama were robbed at gunpoint in the spring of 2006.
Dunn told the Forsyth County News that during that time period in 2006 Tariq-Madyun was considered the "prime and only suspect" in approximately 30 other armed robberies in other Alabama cities, but those cases were closed after Tariq-Madyun was arrested and tried by the circuit court of Morgan County, Alabama.
Tariq-Madyun was found guilty and sentenced to serve six consecutive 25 year sentences, but he was released on parole in December of 2017, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.
With this new
guilty verdict, Forsyth County Superior Court Judge David L. Dickinson
sentenced Tariq-Madyun to two consecutive life sentences for the charges of
armed robbery, five 20-year consecutive sentences for counts of aggravated
assault, and seven 10-year consecutive sentences for counts of false
imprisonment, Dunn said.
In 2018,
authorities told the Forsyth County News that Tariq-Madyun entered the McDonald’s
restaurant off Keith Bridge Road carrying a handgun on the afternoon of Oct.
13, 2018, demanded money from store employees, and then ordered the employees into
a walk-in cooler at the restaurant.
Dunn said that this robbery was "nearly identical" to the six others that he was convicted of in Alabama.
After Tariq-Madyun fled the scene, employees reportedly escaped out the back of the restaurant, flagged down off-duty Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office deputies at a nearby Waffle House.
In a post to Facebook, Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman stated that detectives believed that Tariq-Madyun escaped the scene after being picked up by an unknown vehicle, but he was arrested later that day at his home in Gwinnett County.
In February, the Forsyth County Superior Court handed down indictments against Tariq-Madyun for two counts of armed robbery, seven counts of aggravated assault seven counts of false imprisonment and two counts of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.
"The judge, after listening to the evidence during the trial and hearing from the victims, two of whom testified they thought they were going to die that morning, found it appropriate to sentence him accordingly," Dunn said.
